STORY ARCHIVE

Thinking Cap

Australian scientist Allan Snyder says that "switching off" parts of the brain can help people tap into hidden genius. "What I'm looking at right now is creating a real thinking cap." Graham Phillips reports on amazing Australian research into developing scientific tools that can enhance non-conscious problem-solving.

The work is based on the study of "savant syndrome". People with severe mental disorders who can exhibit extraordinary talents in the field of art, music or mathematics. Professor Allan Snyder believes that savant type abilities "reside equally in all of us." He believes we all have access to this fundamental mechanism but with our higher order cognitive processing we are unable to tap into it.

Researchers have found that healthy volunteers showed similar talents when parts of their brains were briefly "switched off", some volunteers were capable of "savant" abilities.

As Phillips reports, Snyder's 'thinking cap' actually exists - when placed on the wearer's head, it is able to temporarily switch off the brain, and clear the way to the hidden talents that could lie inside. Will it work for our intrepid reporter?

TRANSCRIPT

Narration: Professor Allan Snyder is a controversial scientist. He's won international awards in physics and neurobiology and directs the Centre for the Mind. But he's also known for his distinctly left field approach to science.

Professor Allan Snyder: I know that if everybody likes my ideas, I don't have a great idea.

Narration: Now Allan Snyder wants to give us all brilliant brains. and he's developing a device to do it.

Graham Phillips: I may look like your average Joe reporter, but I'm not. Deep down I'm a genius; we all are according to researchers here.

Narration: In fact they're even working on a special cap, a thinking cap. Just pop it on and it helps you tap the genius within. It's a venture inspired by the mind feats of savants, who have an extraordinary ability to memorise and mimic the world around them.

Graham Phillips: Tell me about the pictures on the back of the wall here.

Professor Allan Snyder: Oh this is fascinating. That is a three and a half five year old severely brain damaged girl, who cannot recognise her own mother from the nurse, but here she is drawing from memory, without any training; now compare this to two bright four year olds. She drew as though she was copying from her mind and in fact savant skills are just that, drawing or whatever as a form of mimicry, they're taking what's in all of our minds but they have privileged access to it.

Narration: Leslie is a savant. He's about to play a piece of music he's heard only once before. Savants have outstanding skills, usually in maths, drawing or music. But their genius comes at a cost. They seem to view the world in a very literal way, whereas we understand the world through concepts.

Professor Allan Snyder: Take the ball, you don't see the shading, your brain . makes it a ball and not a circle. Artists have to learn how to see that, but it's in the brain.

Narration: Perhaps savants tap into this raw information in their brains. Allan believes, deep down, we all have this potential. People who suffer brain damage or dementia later in life, have suddenly developed savant-like skills.

Professor Allan Snyder: If we know that by getting hit on the head or by having dementia you can bring out these unusual skills then what if I were able to invent a way to artificially shut off your brain and bring these out, I mean wouldn't that be amazing, and I had an idea in 1999 that we could do that with magnetic pulses.

Narration: At the time, it was a radical idea, but it intrigued two South Australian researchers.

Dr Robyn Young: I thought that it was just actually a ridiculous suggestion that we had these skills in us.

Narration: Savant specialist, Dr Robyn Young, and physiologist Dr Mike Ridding, set out to prove Allan wrong. Volunteers were given tasks to test typical savant skills, like number puzzles and drawing. To challenge Allan's theory, the same tests were also performed with magnetic pulses applied to the fronto-temporal cortex - the region of the brain known to malfunction in savants. If Allan was right, participants should tap into their unconscious minds, and perform better.

Narration: While not all subjects responded, to the surprise of the researchers, some people did improve dramatically.

Dr Robyn Young: In a way it was not that exciting because I was being proven wrong. I thought that it wouldn't happen.

Narration: And in the future, we may not need magnetic pulses to tap into our savant abilities. Allan Snyder's developing a thinking cap, to train our brains. The electrodes in this cap produce a detailed picture of the areas of my brain affected when the magnetic pulses are applied.

Professor Allan Snyder: When we shut the brain off with the magnetic pulses, we identify those brainwaves responsible for savant like activities, non-conscious thought.

Graham Phillips: So I could actually train my brain in some way to behave more like a savant?

Professor Allan Snyder: Yeah now that we know those brainwaves are responsible for those types of thoughts then we can do without the magnetic pulses and you could monitor your brainwaves on the monitor here and train yourself to enhance them.

Narration: Although research has only just begun, companies are already showing an interest in Allan's thinking cap. They obviously see a demand for a tool to enhance our minds. But Allan's vision is not yet proven. Can we plunge ourselves in and out of our conscious mind at will? What might the side effects be? And does every one of us really have savant abilities? Some people say the thinking cap is just a wild idea, but Allan Snyder, as ever, is undeterred.

Professor Allan Snyder: To make a contribution that actually makes our minds perform better. To accelerate our creativity, that's the ultimate human gift to me. This gift of being able to do something different from anyone else and look at the world a different way. I love it.

YOUR COMMENTS

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meisam ameri - 10 Dec 2010 9:54:44pm

in the name of godhello i think that this ability has in the everybody but dont unfold until while that with power of god become apearant.when i prayer in the doorway of god and i want the ability for the somting different from anyone god oblige for me and then give me the ability to painting the master piece that i knowe those are the best painting in the world until i see.you can see some of them but not best of them by search my name in the internet.and you should knowe that those are have many elegance that if you have not particularity or without my preamble maybe you can not catch it.